1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of computer data storage devices and pertains particularly to a system including methods and apparatus for high-speed data storage and access from a computing device.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of data storage, non-volatile mechanical disk drives have long been relied upon for non-volatile short and long-term data storage. More recently, solid-state non-volatile memory has been implemented for data storage needs, especially in small potable electronic computing devices such as cellular telephones, video cameras and the like. Volatile memory is a solid-state memory typically only used as a high-speed temporary memory such as random access memory (RAM) of which there are many variations known. Common versions of RAM include Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) and Static Random Access Memory (SRAM). Flash memory is a solid-state high-speed data storage solution used primarily in handheld devices or Universal Serial Bus (USB) peripheral devices. Flash memory provides a non-volatile memory for storing data with update speeds approaching that of RAM read and writes access. However, erasing and rewriting to flash memory is comparatively much slower than RAM as entire flash blocks or cells must be erased at one time.
Flash memory has practical uses in cell phones, video cameras, plug-in cards and USB memory devices for portable laptop computers and the like. Disadvantages of using flash as permanent storage in robust systems include the fact that a number of writes performed on the memory defines the life or Mean Time before Failure (MTBF) of a flash memory chip. Another disadvantage is that access to data, while random for reads and writes is still slower than RAM.
It has occurred to the inventor that there is a need for faster data management speeds in the computing industry in general and in particular in the area of robust servers and other business machines. Further, it is desired to provide a pure solid-state disk drive that may be implemented as a normal hard drive package that is recognized and read by a host system as a single non-volatile storage disk, which is swappable with existing mechanical hard disk drives used in many computing systems including desktop computers, data servers, and in mass storage systems using multiple disks stacked in custom or standard array. A system and method for implementing the same would provide much greater data storage and access speeds for computing systems in general.